Ca Quarterly of Art and Culture Issue 30 the Underground Us $12 Canada
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
A QUARTERLY OF ART AND CULTURE ISSUE 30 THE UNDERGROUND c US $12 CANADA $12 UK £7 cabinet Cabinet is a non-profit 501 (c) (3) magazine published by Immaterial Incorpo- rated. Our survival is dependent on support from foundations and generous 181 Wyckoff Street individuals. Please consider supporting us at whatever level you can. Contribu- Brooklyn NY 11217 USA tions to Cabinet are fully tax-deductible for those who pay taxes to Uncle Sam. tel + 1 718 222 8434 Donations of $25 or more will be acknowledged in the next possible issue, and fax + 1 718 222 3700 those above $100 will be acknowledged for four consecutive issues. Checks email [email protected] should be made out to “Cabinet” and sent to our office address. Please mark the www.cabinetmagazine.org envelope, “What’s mine is yours.” Summer 2008, issue 30 Cabinet wishes to thank the following visionary foundations and individuals for their support of our activities during 2008. Additionally, we will forever be Editor-in-chief Sina Najafi indebted to the extraordinary contribution of the Flora Family Foundation from Senior editor Jeffrey Kastner 1999 to 2004; without their generous support, this publication would not exist. Editor Christopher Turner We would also like to extend our thanks to the Orphiflamme Foundation for a UK editor Brian Dillon recent generous donation. Managing editor Colby Chamberlain Associate editor & graphic designer Ryo Manabe Art director Jessica Green $50,000 $250 or under Development director Elizabeth Grimaldi The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Greg Allen Website directors Luke Murphy, Ryan O’Toole, Kristofer Widholm Visual Arts Fred Clarke Editors-at-large Saul Anton, Mats Bigert, Brian Conley, Christoph Cox, Eshrat Erfanian Jesse Lerner, Jennifer Liese, Frances Richard, Daniel Rosenberg, David Serlin, $15,000 Steven Igou Debra Singer, Margaret Sundell, Allen S. Weiss, Eyal Weizman, Margaret The New York City Department of Deborah Lovely Wertheim, Gregory Williams, Jay Worthington, Tirdad Zolghadr Cultural Affairs Ben Marcus Contributing editors Joe Amrhein, Molly Bleiden, Eric Bunge, Pip Day, Charles Jason Pickleman Green, Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Srdjan Jovanovic Weiss, Dejan Krsic, Roxana $10,000 – $14,999 Greg Rowland Marcoci, Phillip Scher, Lytle Shaw, Cecilia Sjöholm, Sven-Olov Wallenstein The New York State Council on the Editorial assistants Laura Nahmias, Mae Saslaw Arts $100 or under Cabinet National Librarian Matthew Passmore The National Endowment for the Arts Walter Cotton Founding editors Brian Conley & Sina Najafi Stina & Herant Katchadourian William David Joshua Kopin Printed in Belgium by the deeply committed men and women at Die Keure $5,000 – $9,999 Laura Howard The Danielson Foundation Jessica Rocks Cabinet (USPS # 020-348, ISSN 1531-1430) is a quarterly magazine Lawrence Weschler published by Immaterial Incorporated, 181 Wyckoff Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. $500 or under Periodicals Postage paid at Brooklyn, NY and additional mailing offices. Spencer Finch Jason Olin Postmaster: James Siena Please send address changes to Cabinet, 181 Wyckoff Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. Subscriptions 1 year (4 issues): US $32, Canada $38, Western Europe $40, Elsewhere $50 2 years (8 issues): US $60, Canada $72, Western Europe $76, Elsewhere $96 Email [email protected] or call + 1 718 222 8434. Subscriptions address: 181 Wyckoff Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217, USA Please either send a check in US dollars made out to “Cabinet,” or mail, fax, or email us your Visa/MC/AmEx/Discover information. Subscriptions are also available online at www.cabinetmagazine.org/subscribe or through Paypal ([email protected]). For back issues, see the last page of this issue. Institutional subscriptions are available through EBSCO or Swets, or via our website. Different rates apply. Advertising Email [email protected] or call + 1 718 222 8434. Distribution Cabinet is available in the US and Canada through Disticor, which distributes both using its own network and also through Ingram, IPD, Armadillo News, Ubiquity, Hudson News, DDRS, Small Changes, Last Gasp, Emma Marian Ltd, Cowley, Kent News, LMPI, Media Solutions, The News Group, Newsways, New- bury Comics, Don Olson Distribution, and Chris Stadler Distribution. If you’d like to use one of these distributors, contact Melanie Raucci at Disticor. Tel: + 1 631 587 1160, Email: [email protected] Cover: Hans Schabus, Western, 2002. Still from video on DVD, 11 min. Cabinet is available in Europe and elsewhere through Central Books, London. Courtesy the artist and Engholm Engelhorn Galerie, Vienna. Email: [email protected] Page 4: A sign on the outskirts of Coober Pedy, an opal-mining town in South A version of Cabinet printed as a book (and sporting an ISBN) is available through Australia where excessive heat leads townspeople to build their homes in D.A.P./ Distributed Art Publishers. Tel: + 1 212 627 1999, Email: [email protected] hillside caves. The advantage of underground living is diminished somewhat by the danger of falling. Photo Kevin Trotman. Email [email protected] or call + 1 718 222 8434 if you need further information. Contents © 2008 Immaterial Incorporated and the authors and artists. All rights in the magazine reserved by Immaterial Incorporated, and rights in the works Submissions contained herein reserved by their owners. Fair users are of course free to do See <www.cabinetmagazine.org/information/submissions.php>. No paper their thing. The views published here are not necessarily those of the writers and submissions, please. artists, let alone the moles who edit Cabinet. columns Main 7 IngestIon / GuInomI 21 MannequIns, Manners, and MutIlAtIon Allen S. Weiss nina Power Intoxicating cup Window-shopping in Iran 11 Inventory / AuspIcIous Cats 26 through God’s Left Eye MArtin ClutterbuCk PAul La fArge The pick of the litter The universal brotherhood of Cao Dai 14 object Lesson / Object of ContentIon 31 behInd the ShIeld CeleSte OlAlquiAgA JOn CAlame Coral grief How the sheriff got his star 17 colors / Maroon 34 gettIng High wIth BenjAmIn and MOyra DAvey burroughs Staying on hue MiChAel Taussig Under the influence 40 future Imperfect The Casey Case, Scenario I 41 future Perfect The Casey Case, Scenario II 42 the Reef BuIlders: An IntervIew wIth Nancy Knowlton margAret wertheiM The vanishing world of coral 47 four LeAves from a CommonplAce BooK D. GrAham Burnett Cut and paste 50 Day-glo DreAms ChriStopher Turner The fluorescent revolution 55 Ways of SeeIng Sasha ArChibAlD Alfred Yarbus’s science of visual attention 59 nowhere, Everywhere, Somewhere JosiAh McElheny Building an alternative history of modernist architecture 62 ArtIst Project: ShoppIng in Sin Casey LogAn the Underground AND 65 ParAdIse Found POSTCARD: Glowworm grotto MAgnus BärtåS Digging up Damanhur booKmArK: TextuAl Depth-meter 69 down the Tube MiChAel SAler Frank Pick’s Underground dream 77 CavemAn: An IntervIew wIth Michel Siffre Joshua Foer Living beyond time 82 the MovIegoer as SpelunKer COlby ChamberlAin Robert Smithson’s underground cinema 84 underworld: An IntervIew wIth RosAlInd Williams Sina Najafi What lies beneath 92 Ant fArm underground MArk WasiutA Recycling silos 94 the HoltermAnn Gold CArl FreDrik Holtermann Mining a vein of family lore 97 subterrAneAn FOES erik PAuSer The fighting women of the Cu Chi tunnels 102 hellbound AlessanDro Scafi To heaven through the bowels of the earth COntributOrS and philosophy. She is currently writing a book on feminism and capitalism for the newly founded Zero Books, and she is also a member of the film col- lective Kino Fist. Sasha Archibald is an independent curator and writer based in Brooklyn. Michael Saler teaches intellectual history at the University of California, Magnus Bärtås is a writer, artist, and professor of fine arts at Konstfack, Davis. He is the author of The Avant-Garde in Interwar England: Medieval Stockholm. The author of two books of essays together with Fredrik Ekman, Modernism and the London Underground (Oxford University Press, 1999) he has exhibitions and screenings forthcoming at the Power Plant, Toronto; and co-editor, with Joshua Landy, of The Re-Enchantment of the World: Sec- The Museum on the Seam, Jerusalem; and Zendai Moma, Shanghai. ular Magic in a Rational Age (Stanford University Press, forthcoming 2009). He is currently writing a history of fictitious people and imaginary worlds D. Graham Burnett is a historian of science at Princeton University, and the from the fin-de-siècle to the present. author of four books, most recently Trying Leviathan: The Nineteenth-Century New York Court Case that put the Whale on Trial and Challenged the Order of Hans Schabus is an artist based in Vienna. Recent solo exhibitions include Nature (Princeton University Press, 2007), which won the 2008 New York “Next Time I’m Here I Will Be There,” at the Barbican Centre, London (2008); City Book Award. This fall, he and Jeff Dolven will be teaching a graduate “Deserted Conquest” at SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2007); and “The Last seminar on the practice of criticism in the arts titled “Critique and Its Discon- Land,” at the Austrian pavilion of the Venice Biennale (2005). He is repre- tents” for Princeton University’s Council of the Humanities. sented by Engholm Engelhorn Gallery, Vienna, and Zero..., Milan. Jon Calame is a partner with Minerva Partners, a non-profit consultancy Alessandro Scafi is a lecturer in medieval and renaissance cultural history group focused on quality in the built environment. He specializes in at the Warburg Institute, University of London. He is the author of Mapping post-conflict urban rehabilitation. His book, Divided Cities: Belfast, Beirut, Paradise: A History of Heaven on Earth (British Library & University of Chi- Jerusalem, Mostar & Nicosia, will be published by the University of Pennsyl- cago Press, 2006). vania Press in early 2009. Michel Siffre is a scientist based in Paris. He is the author of several books, Colby Chamberlain is managing editor of Cabinet. including Beyond Time (McGraw-Hill, 1964) and Découvertes dans les grottes mayas (Arthaud, 1993).